Wednesday, 3 August 2011

Fun in the sun part 2, the not so fun part

It always amuses me to reflect on place names when I race, the other day as I hacked up my lungs in between the bunch and break in boezinge along a course which passes the Ypres canal it occurred that I was literally and metaphorically in no man's land.

Mondays race here in canada was in terra cotta, which means bake earth and I managed to end up truly baked. This was a pretty interesting race, no uci regulations and a huge number of starters. Needless to say it was full gas first lap to get rid of the muppets and countless people managed to lay it down. A brief batboy cyclocross action helped to avoid one sutch sketchfest and it wasn't until 20k later that I realized it had cost me my bottles.

Heat index was 41 degrees c and I had already ridden 40k to get there and had 104k to go and one bottle. I'd set up my pod to cut my basal two hours before the race but riding out there I left two hours before so insulin on board might have been a little high. Normally I'd snack before racing but the heat killed my hunger. The feedzone had plain water in plastic bottles but I wasn't getting one each lap, the riding was well out of line and passing lapped riders made the feed a pretty unsafe place.

After not drinking mix I predictably began to go low, reaching into my pocket for dex i grabbed a pack, and went to rip off the tab, but there wasn't one, I stuffed it back into my shorts and grabbed another, same thing. So now I had no sugar and no electrolytes. I tried to grab something in the feed justvas some kid uses his face to slow down. Closing the gap was not what I needed at that point. A gel and a wheel and I'd have recovered but sometimes it's not meant to be.

I started swinging and missed the break. I shouted for a Coke and some kind soul hooked me up but it was 30ks too late. I finished at 6mmol or about 104 after a dex 4 which Tracey from gsk handed up and a Gatorade. So I was most likely about 2-3 mmol or 60 for a good 45 mins. Good enough for 8th in the 20-29 race and some nasty arsenal stress. Pity there wasn't a bottle cage prime....

That night things got bad. I felt dire incredible cramps in ever part of my body. We went out to dinner and I threw up. I couldn't move as my muscles wouldn't respond. I was desperately looking for anything with salts, but nothing stayed down. Later I managed a drink of magnesium and some vitamin c mix, and some pretzels. My body had gone pretty deep to ride out the hypo and the dehydration. Sine te race I'd had three crashes and put away almost 40g of sugar to get out of each, and barely bolused. I was running on empty.

Jeff from gsk took me to his house, we sat down (well i flopped down like a wet fish) on his sofa and chilled out like old friends. Such a kind guy, we'd only met that day and here he was feeding me dry toast!

Anyway I managed to get to sleep and woke up ravenous, luckily I could go to town on he hotel buffet, and copious amount of salt!